The Grouchy Editor

Just as with any other good presentation, The King’s Speech uses multiple strategies to win over its audience.  The first ploy is an appeal to patriotism:  You don’t have to be a British subject to choose sides in a film about World War II.  The second strategy is to charm the pants off of you.  In this regard, the movie has an unbeatable combo in the odd couple portrayed by Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush.

Firth stars as (the eventual) King George VI, a decent man suffering from a debilitating speech disorder.  He stutters.  Through his wife (Helena Bonham Carter), George engages Lionel Logue (Rush), an eccentric Aussie with peculiar – though possibly effective – vocal techniques.

The King’s Speech is an actors’ showcase.  The verbal and social jousting between Firth and Rush is at the heart of the film, and when the two of them are sequestered in an office, experimenting with everything from recorded music to profanity-laced tirades, the movie is at its best.  It is Pygmalion in reverse, with commoner Lionel wielding power over blue-blooded George.

Looming in the background is all manner of social turmoil, including World War II, the abdication of George’s brother, the feckless Edward VIII, and the Great Depression.  Director Tom Hooper and screenwriter David Seidler try their damndest to link these monumental events to George’s personal struggle, but no matter how hard you try, and the filmmakers certainly do, you can’t gussy up a five-minute radio address to the same dramatic effect as, say, an invasion of Omaha Beach.   It is still just a five-minute radio address.

The King’s Speech is a small movie, often amusing but not very profound.  Despite Hooper’s attempts to make us sweat the fate of England, the overriding impression is that there is just one thing at stake:  George’s self-esteem.       Grade:  B

Director:  Tom Hooper  Cast:  Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Derek Jacobi, Jennifer Ehle, Michael Gambon, Robert Portal, Richard M. Dixon  Release:  2010

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A good deal of the romantic crime-drama Accomplices updates Romeo and Juliet for the wired generation.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the kids in this version of embattled love don’t kindle their passion on anyone’s balcony – they peddle their bodies to middle-aged men found in Internet chat rooms.

Director Frederic Mermoud’s film weaves parallel plots, one involving the star-crossed lovers and the other about two aging detectives assigned to investigate when the boy is killed and the girl disappears.  Both story threads are compelling.  We want to know what happened to Vincent and Rebecca, the kids who took too many risks, but we’re also intrigued by the relationship between cops Herve and Karine, two haunted 40-somethings afraid to risk anything at all.

The film begins with the gruesome discovery of Vincent’s body, bloated and pale, floating in the waters of the Rhone.  From there, a series of flashbacks reveal Vincent’s and Rebecca’s first meeting at a cybercafé and subsequent courtship.  The second story works in reverse time as Herve and Karine unravel what led to Vincent’s murder.

Most of the screen time in Accomplices belongs to the young lovers, played marvelously by Cyril Descours and Nina Meurisse.  Vincent is a 20-year-old hustler, too old for adolescent hijinks but not so jaded that he isn’t entranced by high-school student Rebecca.  We do not learn how Vincent got involved in male prostitution.  Rebecca’s initiation into the dark side, on the other hand, is spelled out in great detail.  The seediness escalates; there is much bare flesh and ugly human nature on display.  Yet through it all, Vincent and Rebecca maintain a credible air of wounded innocence — a compliment to the young stars.

In the end, the stories of Vincent and Rebecca, and Herve and Karine, converge.  It’s bittersweet and satisfying, a final act of which I think Shakespeare would approve.       Grade:  B+

Director:  Frederic Mermoud   Cast:  Gilbert Melki, Emmanuelle Devos, Cyril Descours, Nina Meurisse, Joana Preiss, Jeremy Azencott, Jeremy Kapone, Marc Rioufol, Yeelem Jappain, Clara Ponsot  Release:  2009

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The problem with movies in which the main character begins to hallucinate is that, as a viewer, you are powerless.  The director, not you, gets to decide what’s “real” and what is not.  If he so chooses, anything goes:  Is that a reflection of the heroine in the mirror, or is it the image of a dead woman?  Are those bloody scratches on her body just a hallucination, or are they genuine?  As a mere member of the audience, you can only decide if the filmmaker is playing fair.

Director Darren Aronofsky in Black Swan goes a little too Freddy Krueger for my taste.  His protagonist, a young ballerina named Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), endures one too many surrealistic episodes – often accompanied by that cheapest of movie tricks, the dreaded LOUD SOUND EFFECT! – and these Grand Guignol excursions damage the dramatic flow and credibility of the story.

But Black Swan is never boring.  The acting is first rate, including Barbara Hershey as the creepiest stage mother this side of Kim Stanley in Frances, and Vincent Cassel as a man who has discovered there are no Human Resources departments in ballet companies, and thus uses sexual harassment of young dancers as a routine part of his “instruction.”

Portman stars as a young dancer whom everyone pressures because they believe she has talent but lacks the passion to fully capture the role of the Black Swan in Swan Lake.  Portman dances well, and she proves she can fake orgasms with the best of them, but … all this talk of a Best Actress award?  There are scores of close-ups of Portman’s face, looking tense.  Is that how you win an Oscar?  I think I prefer Annette Bening’s more nuanced performance in The Kids Are All Right.

From press reports it’s apparent that Aronofsky was aiming for a film in the tradition of Roman Polanski’s early thrillers.  What he delivers is All About Eve meets A Nightmare on Elm Street.  His film is atmospheric and packed with histrionics, which is entertaining stuff but not particularly memorable.        Grade:  B

Director:  Darren Aronofsky  Cast:  Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder, Benjamin Millepied, Ksenia Solo, Kristina Anapau  Release:  2010

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As I was watching How to Train Your Dragon, I kept thinking of another film:  Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary, Grizzly Man.  In Herzog’s movie, a naïve young fool named Timothy Treadwell believes he can best-friend-forever wild bears, thereby ignoring thousands of years of human history.  Things do not end well for the optimistic Mr. Treadwell.

In How to Train Your Dragon, one of the lessons seems to be:  Animals are our pals, kindred spirits to all of mankind.  “Everything we know about you guys is wrong,” says the young hero, Hiccup, to a dragon.  That’s probably what the Grizzly Man thought, right before he became breakfast.  Things, of course, do not end so badly for the heroes in Dragon – this is a children’s movie, after all – but the story has little, sorry, bearing on reality.

I suppose if you are eight years old, this animated confection is the cat’s meow.  If, however, you are older, it’s a barely tolerable waste of 98 minutes.  The story is unoriginal, the gags are aimed at pre-teens, and much of what transpires is preposterous.  Young Hiccup, drawn as a teenager, is voiced by an actor who is nearly 30 and whose voice sounds exactly that, which is both bizarre and distracting.

As for the celebrated 3-D special effects … I didn’t see it in 3-D, but according to Roger Ebert, I didn’t miss much.  Says Ebert: “The 3-D adds nothing but the opportunity to pay more to see a distracting and unnecessary additional dimension.”  I’ll take his word for it.

How to Train Your Dragon is well-meaning and well-drawn and well … very nice for eight-year-olds.  It is a Gumby movie with more expensive production values.      Grade:  B-

Directors:  Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders  Voice Talent:  Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera  Release:  2010

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Somebody goofed – big time – when developing All Good Things, the new thriller starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst.  For raw material, the filmmakers had the fact-based, bizarre story of multimillionaire Robert Durst, a can-you-believe-this melodrama involving some, if not all, of the following elements:  murder, embezzlement, blackmail, cross-dressing, corpse dismemberment, and a woman now missing for 28 years.

With all of that material to work with, what did the producers of All Good Things come up with?  A routine Lifetime drama about a battered woman and her unpleasant in-laws.

For two-thirds of the movie, we watch Dunst play innocent bride to husband Gosling’s – well, it’s hard to peg Gosling’s portrayal of the enigmatic Durst (called “David Marks” in the film).  As played by Gosling, the man is sullen, distant, talks to himself, and has mother issues, but hardly seems the threatening type.  Lurking in the background, pulling son David’s strings, is omnipotent real estate mogul Sanford Marks, played grumpily by Frank Langella.

Katie (Dunst) wants children; David does not.  He hits her; she rationalizes his behavior.  She wants her freedom; he wants to control her.  Blah, blah, blah and haven’t we seen all of this dozens of times?  Katie agonizes.  Katie contemplates leaving David.  Dunst bares her boobies in a shower scene, which makes news in The Huffington Post and Vanity Fair.  Dunst … should never have been the focus of this film.

It’s only in the final third of the movie that the filmmakers turn their attention to the real story:  odd, odd David/Robert.  But by then it’s too late.  All of those elements that make the Durst story so compelling – the murder, madness and mayhem – are crammed into the final act like so many body parts into a suitcase.  The story becomes jumbled and teases us with what might have been a pretty good thriller.       Grade:  C+

Director:  Andrew Jarecki  Cast:  Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Langella, Lily Rabe, Philip Baker Hall, Michael Esper, Diane Venora, Nick Offerman, Kristen Wiig, Stephen Kunken  Release:  2010

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